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Drupal 6.0 beta 2 released

Our first Drupal 6 beta version was released just over a month ago, so given the large number of usability improvements and bug fixes that we've added since then, we're proud to announce the release of the second beta version of Drupal 6.x for your testing. This beta version includes all the latest security bug fixes as released in Drupal 5.3 and 4.7.8. The first beta announcement provided a comprehensive list of improvements made since Drupal 5.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 6 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

The most notable change is that we moved the long time favorite Drupal.module out of the Drupal package. It will instead be available as the contributed Site network module. This was done because Drupal 6 has a more secure and widely supported solution for distributed authentication in the form of the OpenID standard.

We've also fixed a number of issues since the previous beta. We fixed numerous PHP notices, upgraded to jQuery 1.2.1, included a more secure solution for IN() queries, added schema based load and save functions, extended built-in AHAH functionality so developers can write AHAH code without JavaScript for different types of form elements, merged .schema files with .install files, made it possible for themes to override core and module CSS files and made it possible to have comment settings per node type, among a number of other improvements.

So when does 6.0 get released?

Drupal 6.0 will be released after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we've had at least one release without adding any more to the list.

When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on how many people chip in and help out! The more people help, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 6.0 gets released. The faster 6.0 gets released, the faster we can start adding new features to Drupal 7.0. So help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :)

How do I help test the beta?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on a previous version (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running any beta release on a live site. Also, always make sure to backup of your data before performing an upgrade or start testing.

New Drupal users

Are you completely (or relatively) new to Drupal? Or do you know just enough to be dangerous? Are you used to working with other content management systems, and willing to lend your perspective in improving the way Drupal works? If so, you're a perfect candidate to help with usability testing and improving documentation! As you're going through Drupal 6, take notes on things you find difficult or confusing, and translate those notes into an issue which will show up in the issue tracker. Make sure to be as clear as possible about what the problem was and provide suggestions on how to improve it -- this makes it easier for developers to help!

Testers

Do people often congratulate you on your ability to break things? Are you a creative individual who likes to experiment with things in unconventional ways to see what happens? Do you enjoy looking over other peoples' work and picking nits in order to make it as good as it possibly can be? If any of these apply to you, you could make a great tester! We need testers both to try out different aspects of Drupal itself, as well as take a look at the issue queue to check bugs to see if they're valid, and also test patches to see if they work properly. Read more on setting up a testing environment and how to apply patches.

Module and theme developers

There is no better way to shake out any lingering bugs with the API and to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal than to update your modules and update your themes! Make sure to file any bugs that you find!

Drupal Ninjas and Ninjas-in-training

If you're adept at Drupal hacking, or are eager to learn, a great place to start is with the bug tracker or the patch queue. Even if you don't have a full solution for a problem, often even a step in the right direction can be enough for another developer to take it home! Read up on how to create patches.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 6.0 are not frozen yet. A notice will be sent to the translators mailing list, when the interface is close to being ready for translation. Until that time, there is no point in starting to translate, so we are not providing translation templates.

Just a quick word of warning... I developed Ubercart.org on Drupal 5.x beta 2 and ended up not being able to update directly once the 5.0 release came out. It was quite unfortunate and I had to move my nodes by hand which was tedious and definitely not ideal. Just letting you know it can happen. ; )

Thank you. Upgrade went well. However, my menus was inconsistent (missing menus) but after a few pages of navigation, it displayed as expected. I guess it could be the menus were not refreshed/updated yet initially. No more problems now.

Hi,
if you want many people to beta test drupal, you should make more obvious on the frontpage that there is currently a beta going.

Because once this post will be on page 2..... 95% of new comers to the site will ignore there is a beta.
This was the case with beta1: the announcement post sank, and there was no obvious way to know a beta was going on.

They see things differently and that input is much needed. Of course, they need to understand that this is just a beta not the usual rock solid Drupal stable release.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

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Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.
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The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

I played with Drupal about a year ago but didn't do anything serious with it. I heard about the new beta yesterday and thought I'd re-visit it. I've set up a test site at http://bfadrupaltest.markavey.com/ with a view to it being a replacement for one of my other sites.

I've only been "playing" with it for a few hours, but I'm very impressed by what can be achieved with it.

I'm currently testing the new version.
one thing did surprise me, there is not 1 translation for 6.X. I must admit i have to do some more research on it, but I couldn't find any support yet.

Second I'm busy to integrate a CSS grid in the template system, but the new template system(*.info) is very concise to customize, there's no option for other names for ID and classes or load css through Conditional comments.

The text in Drupal was just recently sent through a correction phase. Correcting typos, wording and spacing issues. Until this is finalized, I wouldn't expect translators to produce 6.x translations.

you may also want to read: http://groups.drupal.org/node/5219_____________________________________________________________________My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )

When Drupal 6 is closer to being released there will be a string freeze period that will give translators a bit of time to make translations before the release. Right now the strings are still pretty volatile, see e.g. http://drupal.org/node/163246

Drupal 6.0 will be released after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we've had at least one release without adding any more to the list.

When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on how many people chip in and help out! The more people help, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 6.0 gets released. The faster 6.0 gets released, the faster we can start adding new features to Drupal 7.0. So help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :)

If you go to your user profile and enable the "contributor block", you can see a running total of the critical issues (currently 27). Any of those issues that are coloured yellow need someone to download a copy of Drupal 6, apply the patch, test it out, and report back with feedback. This is a great place to start if you're interested in seeing 6.0 release faster.

Shouldn't this release be an update rather than an upgrade? Other than the introduction of the translation feature there hasn't been any major improvement. Improvement yes, but not a major impoverishment compared to the upgrade from 4.x to 5.x.

Drupal 5 was a polished 4.7 - apart from a few new features like a new theme and an installer, most of it was about improving the rough edges of 4.7 (as 4.7 was a big disruptive change). Drupal 6 reworks lots of underlying stuff (menus, logging, actions/triggers, performance etc) and completely opens up theming to designers by exposing templates for just about everything. It's a very exciting release IMO.

The version numbering changed with Drupal 5 anyway - it changed from x.y.z to x.y. So the jump between Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 should be compared with the changes between 4.5 -> 4.6 -> 4.7 etc. There isn't a 4.x series that makes any sense for overall comparison, as there was nothing consistent about all the 4.x releases.